Tactiq Limited

Tactiq collaborates in new cancer imaging project

Tactiq has a key role in a new UK collaboration which has been awarded a £325k grant from the UK’s Technology Strategy Board, to support the development of a groundbreaking Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) imaging technology that hopes to revolutionise cancer diagnosis and treatment.

The collaboration is between Tactiq, optical imaging company Michelson Diagnostics, University of Cardiff, Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, National Physical Laboratory and semiconductor specialist Kamelian. Tactiq are an ISO13485 embedded systems development consultancy with specialist knowledge and experience developing medical imaging systems.

The funded project, titled ‘OMICRON’, will last two years, and will focus on development of an in-vivo imaging probe, using OCT, to obtain high resolution sub-surface images of cancerous tissue, operating at the new, untried wavelength of 1μm.

Leading OCT researcher Professor Wolfgang Drexler, Director of Research at the University of Cardiff Dept. of Optometry and Vision Science, said “We believe that images acquired at 1μm wavelength will offer improved contrast and resolution that will help clinicians to distinguish between healthy and cancerous tissue”.

Clinicians frequently take biopsy samples of tissue for laboratory analysis by pathologists when diagnosing, assessing, treating and monitoring cancer. This can be inefficient, expensive and time-consuming. The biopsy may be poorly targeted on the tumour, and results from the analysis can take weeks to come back.

Dr Nick Stone, Head of Biophotonics at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, added “OCT scanning has the exciting potential of both guiding and reducing the dependence on biopsies, which could speed up cancer diagnosis and treatment, reducing the pressure on overloaded pathology departments, and improve outcomes from cancer surgery”.

Vincent Ellis, Sales and Marketing Manager of Tactiq said “We are very proud to be part of this world class collaboration developing this ground breaking technology into products which will have a major positive impact on cancer patient diagnosis and treatment.”